Hut site, Derrycarna, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Derrycarna, Co. Kerry

Six of these structures survive together on the upper south-western slopes of Drishana mountain in County Kerry, clustered near the source of a southward-flowing tributary of the Gearhameen river.

That grouping is what makes this particular hut site worth pausing over. Solitary examples of early settlement are common enough across the Irish uplands, but a cluster of six in one location suggests something more deliberate, a community or a seasonal working arrangement played out in boggy, boulder-strewn ground that would have demanded considerable effort to inhabit.

The hut itself is oval in plan, roughly eight metres by four and a half metres across, its walls built using a revetment of upright stones, a technique in which slabs are set on their ends to form the inner and outer faces of a wall rather than being laid flat in courses. The wall stands about 65 centimetres high and is roughly 1.2 metres thick, modest dimensions but consistent with a temporary or seasonal shelter rather than a permanent dwelling. The terrain around it is described as poorly drained and rocky, the kind of high ground that in early medieval Ireland was typically used for summer grazing, a practice known as booleying, in which people and livestock moved to upland pastures during the warmer months. Whether that explains this cluster is not certain, but the location, the building type, and the grouping all point in that direction.

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